For Joanne's voice had died away in a whispering breath, and the lips he kissed did not kiss him back, and her body lay heavy, heavy, heavy in his arms.

Yet in his loneliness he thanked God for bringing her oblivion in these last moments, and with his face crushed to hers he waited.

For he knew that it was no longer a matter of minutes, but of seconds, and in those seconds he prayed, until up through the warm smother of her hair--with the clearness of a tolling bell--came the sound of the little gong in his watch striking the Hour of Four! In space other worlds might have crumbled into ruin; on earth the stories of empires might have been written and the lives of men grown old in those first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held his breath and waited after the chiming of the hour-bell in the watch on the cavern floor.

How long he waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing Joanne to his breast he did not realize.

Seconds, minutes, and other minutes--and his brain ran red in dumb, silent madness.